Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying policy measures affected women's economic and social lives differently from men. However, its effect on the food security situation of women and men remains unclear. This study investigated whether female-headed households suffer more from covid 19 impact on food security than male-headed households in Ethiopia using the World Bank High Frequency Phone Survey data. Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) is applied to measure food insecurity and multilevel-mixed effect random intercept linear model is used to analyze the determinants. The survey data show that, during the pandemic in 2020, nearly 27% of households face moderate or severe food insecurity and close to 6% face severe food insecurity. Regression results revealed that the pandemic and accompanying policy measures affected food security of female-headed households differently from male-headed households. The likelihood of female-headed households experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity is significantly higher by 5.7% points than male-headed households. Education level of the household head is the critical determinant of women's food insecurity. Every additional year of education of female heads has a significantly higher impact in reducing the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity than that of male-headed households. It is also found that having access to basic food items reduces the likelihood of facing moderate or severe food insecurity by 7.4% points. Besides, education level of the household head, income change and family size are critical determinants for food insecurity of the sample households. It is recommended that stakeholders and policy makers focus in the gender aspect while designing policy measures to control pandemics and fucus on improving accessibility of basic needs such as food items to all.

Following the 2007/2008 global food price crisis, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) proliferated across the Global South. However, empirical evidence investigating the role of rising prices in this proliferation remains lacking. This study provides the first empirical estimates of the relationship between agriculture commodity price dynamics and LSLAs. We constructed a unique bilateral panel data across 82 investor and 80 recipient countries between 2000 and 2020 and estimated a bilateral panel gravity model using two-way fixed effects and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) estimator. The findings reveal that agricultural producer prices in recipient countries are primary drivers of LSLAs. Specifically, we find a negative relationship between these prices and LSLAs which indicate that investors target regions with lower producer prices. This suggests that the food independence motive outweighs the profit maximization motive in these investment decisions. Furthermore, the effect of investor-country food prices on LSLA flows is heterogeneous and depends on deal size. We find a positive association for the flow of smaller LSLA deals, suggesting smaller deals are driven by the food independence motive. However, this relationship becomes insignificant for larger deals, indicating that extensive acquisitions are less sensitive to food prices and are likely driven by other factors such as speculation, biofuel production, or financial diversification motives. These results contribute empirical evidence to the debate in the drivers of LSLAs. The study recommends that recipient countries implement targeted land governance policies to mitigate speculation and mandate produce for local markets. JEL Classifications: Q1, F2.